


Nobody Wants To Be The Only One Who Sees The Pain

by kjstark



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, fuckboysquad writing challenge, this is a mess but it had to be this way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 03:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3274964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjstark/pseuds/kjstark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You were saying?”<br/>“I— wasn’t, really,” the guy replied, frowning.<br/>“No, I mean, I interrupted the part where you ask me about my problems and stuff,” Isco said, nonchalantly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nobody Wants To Be The Only One Who Sees The Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so, uhm, few points so you'll understand why this is the way it is (I'm so sorry my first Jamisco story has to be a spacegoat).
> 
>   * This was made for [my writing squad challenge thing](http://fuckboysquad.livejournal.com/). Basically consists of us giving the group prompts to use for writing. 
>   * This past month was my prompt and it was based on Ingrid Michaelson's "Open Hands" 
>   * The quote that inspired this whole story is "Open hands are hard to hold onto, anyway" and if you notice, it's very angsty in on itself. 
>   * So that's why this doesnt have a general happy ending. I apologize, address your complaints here @isco_alarcon ;-)
> 


“Hit it,” Isco commanded the bar tender, pointing at his empty glass. The guy turned to him, shook his head, and walked to serve him more.

“I hope you got a ride home, dude,” he scoffed as he poured more vodka into his glass. Isco took his shot and slowly shook his head, clicking his lips as he sucked the bitter taste of alcohol off them. The guy stared him down, he looked young—younger, he had green eyes and an endearing smile. Maybe if Isco’s heart wasn’t lying and crashing and burning on the floor he would’ve tried a move, maybe he also hoped alcohol would help with anything aside the sick feeling in his gut.

His cellphone rang.

“Err,” Isco raised his forefinger as asking him to wait a second. Upcoming call: Dani. Agh, not now, no. Isco let the phone rang and rang. The guy was looking at his phone and then at him raising his eyebrows.

Bailando, bailando, bailando, bailando.

“Maybe you should pick that,” the guy suggested, pressing his lips in a downwards curve.

Tu cuerpo y el mío llenando el vacío, subiendo y bajando.

“I really shouldn’t,” Isco told him, with an honest but pained smile. The ringtone ended, such as the attempted call. Isco unlocked his phone, deleted the missed call, and locked it again. “You were saying?”

“I— wasn’t, really,” the guy replied, frowning.

“No, I mean, I interrupted the part where you ask me about my problems and stuff,” Isco said, nonchalantly. The guy scoffed.

“You know, I don’t get paid for that,” he said.

“So Hollywood lied to me this whole time?” Isco dropped his head to the counter, and pointed at his empty glass once more, head still hidden.

“Okay, fine, I won’t deny I’m not slightly interested,” he admitted as Isco raised his head back to drink his shot. “So,” he turned back to look for a mop and a cleaning product. He raised them up to Isco’s face.

“Ah,” he said, loudly, as the guy splashed the product on the mope.

“What’s troubling you, sailor?” he asked in a weird tone. Isco thought there was certain beauty to the fact that he was ready to talk about his private life with a total stranger, but chances were he’d never see this guy again, so, it was much better than having to bare his heart to Dani or Alvaro or Nacho, he sees them every day. “Got divorced?”

“Nah— I mean, I did, but that was three years ago,” the guy made the most weird-ed out face Isco’d ever seen, except for maybe that time Chicha found out about The Chicken issue. Again, Isco would’ve laughed, but his heart rolling in the floor made him unable to. He pointed his glass again.

“At this pace, I don’t think I’ll get to hear the real history,” he muttered, filling up the glass.

Isco drank as his heart sank deeper, while the memories rushed back to his brain.  
-o-

“Isco?” James called, all sweet, worried voice. Isco turned from the sink from which he just washed his face. Never mind his failed attempt at forgetting James hips moving on the dance floor.

Isco raised his sweaty head from the sink and locked eyes with the wall behind James’ back. “I’m fine,” he said, but his voice was raspy and reeked of lustful hunger.

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t seen this coming. He played nonchalant the first time James came to practice, but he quickly grew confident enough as to wink at him in his first game —before he gently rubbed his fingertips against his palms as he high five’d him. He knew his heart skipped a beat the first time James saved him a spot during lunch time because he claimed that he was already friends with everyone but him, and that he was going to change that.

He even knew his loins groaned when he caught a glimpse of the curve of James’ butt when he was done showering the other day. So much even Toni noticed him ogling, and the poor German always seemed to be lost about what was going on around him.

“You disappeared after I got up on the stage, and honestly, dude, you don’t sound good at all,” James said, cracking a laugh as he tried to reach him. Isco ran to the hand dryer machine, avoiding James’ careful touches and worried puppy eyes.

Which is what had started it all, if he was being honest. It was all James fault. All his careless, latin American warm and trustful persona. He smiled like the sweetest damn thing on the planet and Isco just melted into it, because it might not be any different to him, but it was so foreign to Isco, so far from being anything he’d seen before.

It was as if James grew inside a bubble that protected him from every bad influence of this messed up world, making him a perfect gem, so forbidden from Isco’s sinful touch.

He swallowed hard. “Maybe I ate something rotten,” he lied, the sound of the dryer filling the silent room.

“Maybe you should go home, then. I can take you,” he offered. And really? God was most likely testing Isco by this point.

He looked up to the ceiling and cursed in his mind. “I don’t think so,” he said, sighing. James chuckled. “I mean it, you shouldn’t leave the party for me,” he added, turning this time to face him. He tried an honest smile even though he was raging frustrated. At all himself, James, and his dick for not knowing how to behave properly.

“Well, if you’re not here, then I don’t wanna be here either,” James confessed with the uttermost kind smile Isco’d ever seen in anyone other than James. He shrugged to seem casual, and that made him even cuter. “Ain’t no disco without Isco,” and that broke it. The tension, the pain in his head and his groin, because that had to be worst joke he’d ever heard regarding his own name.

Isco burst into laughter for so long he thought he could’ve been running out of air at any point.

“Sergio said it,” James defended himself, but there was amusement on his tone.

“Oh, no, no, yeah, of course he did,” Isco muttered, between laughs. He wiped the tears off the corner of his eyes to open them and noticed the distance between him and James had become almost non-existent. “Shit,” he breathed out when he realized James had cornered him against the wall.

So much for innocent puppy.

James rested a doubtful hand of Isco’s shoulder as if to steady him, it was like he heard Isco’s entire circuits go ‘pop’ as soon as he looked into deep brown eyes. Isco held onto the firm hand on his shoulder to remind himself that this was real, and James was inches away from his face, smelling exactly like a mix between Cristiano’s favorite cologne and Marcelo’s favorite drink.

He tilted his head just a little bit to brush their noses together, checking, making sure before he made a fool of himself and threw his entire professionalism off the road. He saw James’ eyelids fall, holding his breath in, and he thanked the God he cursed a few minutes ago.

When their lips met it wasn’t anything as he imagined. His throat closed tightly as his hands stiffed themselves on James’ sides, not knowing where to go, what to touch. It was like he was learning to kiss again even thought he’d kiss at least fifteen people down the road that was his life.

But James was different; he was sweet and caring, and confident but also shy, he was both the playful, innocent and the defensive and territorially aggressive side of a golden retriever. Which is why when Isco slipped his tongue inside his mouth he was met with cheerful excitement and playful fight for dominance.

He switched spots and turned James over, slamming him against the wall just next to the hand dryer. James gasped for air one second and the next he was biting on Isco’s lower lip. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to your place?”

Isco hoped his growl was a sufficient answer for the Colombian.  
-o-

“It’s empty,” he declared, whistling. The bartender startled and grabbed the bottle again. Served him more and settled again.

“Ok, keep going, where did you fuck up?” he wondered. Isco frowned as he took a sip of his drink.

“What makes you think it was me who fucked up?” he almost felt insulted.

“You described him using the words “golden retriever”, if he would’ve been the one who fucked up you would’ve used something like “stinky Chihuahua”,” he answered, as if it was a serious statement. Isco saw himself agreeing.

“Well, after that we sorta became this unspoken…thing,” the guy sighed painfully. “Yeah, it was good, but not really.”  
-o-

“You’re kidding,” James said, laughing, his head shaking on Isco’s stomach. It was a lazy afternoon and they were free for three days. James had stayed in the night before and they were done watching the third Batman movie.

“Well, I was little and I was fed lies,” he refuted.

“You were also very stupid, Isco. I mean, I liked Spiderman but I wasn’t about to try crawl walls and break my head in the process,” he said, chuckling. Isco shrugged on the couch.

“Well, your mother taught you better than mine taught me, I guess,” he said.

“Ahhh,” he groaned into Isco’s abs.

“What?”

“I just remembered my mom’s tostones, man, they’re delightful,” he told him, looking up to him as his mouth watered. Isco petted his head and smiled down at him.

“Tell me about her,” he asked. And James did.

James missed his home in Cucuta, his friends, his neighbors. He missed the smell, the weather, the people. The fact that he knew every corner of every street in his hometown, where to have fun, where to eat which food, where to take your date.

He missed simpler times, simpler football.

They fell asleep on the couch talking about Colombia and James’ childhood. James dreamed of dusty sidewalks and guava juice, and Isco dreamed of a lifetime with James in it.

That was the afternoon he fell in love with him.

And why three days later, when he realized, he freaked out and cut it all off.  
-o-

“Hey, I know we just met and I’m still depending on you to pay me for all these drinks but, man, are you stupid?” the bartender asked, and Isco figured he deserved it.

In fact ‘stupid’ was a balm in comparison to what Alvaro, Jesé, Dani and Nacho were going to say to him, repeatedly.

Isco nodded and pointed his glass again. The guy shook his head and served him more.

“Well, you gotta tell the guy the truth now,” he advised. Isco shot a bitter laugh at his now empty glass.

“Yeah, that’s…not going to happen anytime soon,” Isco trailed.

“Why not?”  
-o-

Three months had passed since their two months of magic, puppy love and James was an official wreck.

Everyone hated him guts and Isco only but allowed himself to sink deeper. Dani wasn’t talking to him, Nacho wasn’t talking to him, and even Casillas — who generally didn’t support any romance in the squad after the Kaka and Cristiano fiasco— was giving him the cold shoulder. Only Toni was okay with him, but that was partly because he didn’t realize he was the reason James looked like a kicked puppy.

“Maybe he’s homesick,” Toni said, in his weird Spanish. Isco only but nodded at him, and continued to fix his boot. He trained five meters away from James and did his best to keep his eyes from lingering to him.

But then international break happened.

And when James came back to Madrid a whole different guy, Isco knew he should’ve known better.  
-o-

“He met someone,” the bartender gasped, as if he was watching a movie.

“Not met, he already knew him,” Isco corrected, pointing at his alcohol-less shot. The guy rolled his eyes before pouring the last drops of tequila into his glass. “He’s a teammate from his country’s team, his right-hand man, his bestest bud” Isco said, swallowing hard.  
-o-

“Juan,” he said, in the same accent James had and Isco fought the urge to press his teeth. Jesé took his hand excitedly and shook it.

“He came by for a few days and then he’s off to London,” James shared, grin growing wide.

“We’re not supposed to say that,” Juan muttered between his teeth.

“It’s okay, parcero, I trust them,” James said, with a smile that lingered through all of them but vanished when his eyes met Isco’s.

“You gonna play at Premier?” Isco asked, suddenly. He wanted to see if maybe there was a chance he could have this guy on the floor, under arguably right circumstances.

“Yeah, Chelsea,” he said, proudly, and James slid his arm above his shoulder.

“Nice,” he said, fake smiling. The glass on his hand weighing a little too much, so he drank it in a desperate gulp.

Everyone stared at him, confusedly.

“I’m gonna go, grab a little more,” Isco informed.

“I’ll go with you,” James said, all of the sudden before Isco could stop him. He stepped right behind his foot all the way to the drinks table. “We need to talk,” he whispered to his ear, between loud music.

Isco frowned, fake-ly. “Do we really?” he asked, pouring himself a shot of vodka. He didn’t turn to look at him and James grew tired.

He spun him over so he was facing him and his face was anything but nice. James straightened himself once he noticed how it all looked.

“I’m happy with him,” James said, sadly. But Isco knew it wasn’t for himself but for him. James was sad because he moved on and he wanted Isco to. “I didn’t tell him about us. Actually, I didn’t tell anyone but everyone seems to know, I don’t know how--,”

“Nothing’s ever a secret in Real Madrid,” Isco muttered, closing his eyes, annoyed. James looked up to him, angry.

“You never made it clear if you —,”

“I know, James! Don’t you think I fucking know that?” Isco snapped at him. “I thought it was enough. I thought talking about our pasts, about our future — damn, I told you things I’ve never told anyone before— I thought that was enough, but I was wrong, and for that I’m sorry,” Isco said looking down to James’ Versace dress shoes.

“I’m sorry, too,” James replied, bitterly. “Because I’m not a goddamned mind-reader, Isco,” he added before storming off, leaving him with an already too warm drink.  
-o-

“MARC!” someone yelled from inside the backdoor of the bar. The guy looked at Isco with complete pity.

“We’re closing,” he informed him. And Isco gave him the money he wrote in the bill. “I’m sorry,” he said, honestly. Isco shrugged, despite himself. “You know what they say,”

“What?”

“If you like it you should’ve put a ring on it,” the guy tried to joke.

And Isco laughed for the first time in at least six months, all before his heart fell silent again.


End file.
